Joshua Spodek Joshua Spodek is author of Leadership Step by Step and host of the Leadership and the Environment podcast. An adjunct professor at NYU and leadership coach and workshop leader for Columbia Business School, Joshua currently lives in New York City. What is your morning routine? To the untrained eye my morning routine (and all my other routines) seems to take away what it actually gives me: freedom. But[…] Keep reading →

Morning Routines and Success You show me a successful person and I’ll show you one with daily habits. MyMorningRoutine.com brings today’s successful people’s habits. You show me a successful person and I’ll show you one with structured daily habits. The more successful, the more self-imposed, challenging, relevant, and active his or her habits. Even bad-boy athletes, apparently self-indulgent rock stars, and counter-cultural artists have habits. Rather, the long-term successful ones do. The[…] Keep reading →

With the Rocky movie franchise overdone, it feels hard to imagine the original when it came out. Neither the movie nor Sylvester Stallone were institutions. I grew up in Philadelphia and I remember some of its popularity, certainly for Rocky II. It was nominated for 9 Oscars and won 3. If the Rocky movies are about anything, they’re about a man finding within himself the discipline and motivation to achieve[…] Keep reading →

100 years ago tomorrow, the United States President appealed to the nation to eat less meat and sugar. The reason then was to support allies in World War I. The stakes today seem less acute but comparably high. If the president could do it then, a president can do it now. The current president might not, based on how much sugar and meat he eats, but in principle a president[…] Keep reading →

Lifting weights in my 20s made me tired that day and sore the next two, though I didn’t lift regularly or follow a program. Now in my 40s, lifting a couple times a week plus twice-daily calisthenics make my muscles feel tired all the time. … but I can do multiple sets of weights I couldn’t lift off the ground months ago. If I were against fitness, as most Americans[…] Keep reading →

Sorry to write about something unpleasant during a holiday about food, but the past couple days, I don’t know what I ate, but something didn’t agree with me. Sorry if you consider it too much information, but I consider it a part of life. My gastrointestinal tract was unsettled, keeping me up at night, forcing me to go to the bathroom a lot, so I only slept a few hours[…] Keep reading →

My LinkedIn post today, “Would you give a friend heroin?,” began Would you give a friend heroin? A few months ago the host of a podcast I was on sent me a package of brownies to thank me for appearing on his show. The brownies were prepackaged and looked like this: A younger me would have eaten them right away. My longtime readers know several reasons I wouldn’t eat them. First, they[…] Keep reading →

Fun with language Longtime readers may remember that most of my life I ate chips, pretzels, and ice cream almost daily. I felt helpless to stop. It was frustrating. A few years ago I switched to fruit, nuts, and vegetables for snacks. I’m never going back. I wrote about how I started calling a head of cabbage a bag of chips in my post How to eat a bag of[…] Keep reading →

Regular readers know my passion for burpees and eating from how much I write about them. I think they both contribute about equally to my health. I noticed a big difference between them. Eating I like starting but not finishing. Burpees I like finishing but not starting. I feel like there’s something deep there.